In yesterday’s post annotating the week’s workout, I occasionally mentioned modifications I would offer for different kinds of clients. Today my plan is to annotate that annotation, more or less, and discuss modifications generally and why we might want or need to make them.
Workouts do not have to be horrible. This is one of my foundational beliefs. Life is too short for horrible things. (This does not mean that workouts will always be all fun, all the time, but I try to find the least-horrible ways to get the job done for my clients.)
There are three basic reasons to make modifications to a workout: to avoid an exercise that we hate, to make the work harder, and to make the work easier.
That first one could be easy. I could just substitute any other exercise for the one my client hates and be done with it. The trick is, though, that I want to find another way for my client to do the kind of work I think they need to do. In other words, if my client hates squats, I need to find another way to work glutes and quads and hammies and abs. It might mean that I shift multiple other exercises to get the job done if the hated exercise is one that does a lot of different things. Also, I will occasionally leave the hated exercise in there because sometimes, as clients get stronger, they find they can tolerate it later.
Making exercises harder is fun because it means that we’ve made progress. We can simply make the weights heavier or we can do more reps. We can change the relationship to gravity, as when we put feet up on a box or medicine ball or bench to do pushups. We can add instability by using a BOSU or a stability ball or by doing the exercise on one foot instead of two. We can add jumping or another cardio element (for example, squats becoming jump squats). We can change the tempo, making things either fast and explosive (once we’re sure that we have really good form) or slowing things down a lot to maximize time under tension.
When we need to make exercises easier, sometimes it is because a client is new and needs to build up endurance or strength, or hasn’t yet mastered the form of an exercise. This is where we choose lighter weights, fewer reps, and shorter lever arms, as when we do knee- or wall-based pushups. Other times, we are dealing with pain. Once a client understands the difference between the kind of pain that means injury and the discomfort that naturally accompanies working out, I say: if it hurts, don’t do it. (Note: physical therapists, who have a bunch more specific knowledge than I do, often make their clients do things that hurt for their own good. Any injury that requires physical therapy is one that means no working out that injured part until after physical therapy is done and the PT says that it is all right to get back to workouts. This is common sense.) Some chronic conditions, like osteoporosis, do require permanent modifications in exercises.
We all need modifications from time to time. I’m here to make them for you!
